“That’ll do just fine, son,” he grinned.

“I thought robbery was illegal,” I muttered as I handed over the diablos and snatched the hot dog from his hands.

“I think you’ll find there’s very little that’s illegal here,” he replied with a chuckle.

I held the hot dog up to my mouth, but as I was about to take a bite, the sausage slipped out of the roll and fell into the middle of a nest of garbage.

I looked across to the vendor, who had already begun to construct another hot dog. Once again, I handed over fifteen of those red notes. And once again, as I was about to bite into it, the sausage slithered out and flopped down to the ground. The vendor shrugged and moved onto hot dog number three. I counted the notes in my pocket. There were only twenty left.

“No thanks, I’ll just have the rolls,” I snarled, and in five savage bites I had finished them off. They were as filling as three-day-old newspaper, but I was damned if I was going to give any more money to this thief with his lubricated sausages.

I continued walking down the street. It was beginning to rain lightly, but I wasn’t bothered. I found another nightclub that didn’t have a line outside and made a beeline for the door. But as I was about to walk through, a thickset figure blocked my path.

“You got ID?” he said in a voice that seemed to be coming from the bottom of his stomach.

“I need ID?” I replied, attempting to feign ignorance. I didn’t have to try that hard.

“No ID, no entry,” the bouncer said, as a couple of people pushed past us and into the club.

“Those other people didn’t need ID,” I said, pointing through the door where the people had disappeared.

“You ain’t those other people. You wanna get in, you gotta have ID.” And though his point needed no underlining, he underlined it anyway by turning his arm muscles into something resembling an armoured tank.

“You’re right, and I’m so sorry for wasting your time,” I said, and then I quickly departed before any military exercises could be conducted on my face.

At the next three clubs I tried, I encountered similar situations. It seemed that for some reason I was the only person in Hell who required ID to get into a club. It also seemed that, judging by appearances, the security industry in Hell was a family business.

As I walked away from the fourth nightclub, a sign on the other side of the road caught my attention: Free Entry to All – No ID Required. I approached the side of the road. The chances of crossing didn’t seem good. The traffic was bumper to bumper, with every car moving at something close to the speed of sound. There wasn’t even space for a fly to get across.

I stood on the side of the road for ages. A couple of times, I took a tentative step forwards, but the screaming of horns sent me scurrying back. There was clearly no way I was going to get across. My only option now was to take extreme measures, to commit an act that under any other circumstance I would never consider. I was going to have to use a pedestrian crossing.

The very idea of finding a pedestrian crossing in Hell seemed about as likely as finding a gold nugget in a septic tank. Which made it all the more splendid when I happened to spy one barely a block up the street. I pressed the call button and I waited. I waited and waited, pounding again on the button at regular intervals. Eventually, it became apparent that the lights weren’t about to change. I would have to abandon any hope of getting to that ID-free nightclub that beckoned so loudly.

Still, as I walked away, I couldn’t help taking one fleeting glance back. Amazingly, the traffic had stopped, and a green Walk sign shone like a beacon. I skidded around and raced back to the crossing. Of course, I was too late. A red Don’t Walk had reappeared and the traffic surged forwards again.

I screamed and swore and stamped my foot down on the ground, which felt suspiciously soft underfoot. I lifted my foot. A thick, brown, and extremely pungent substance clung to the bottom of my shoe, and from the corner of my eye, I noticed a mangy cur running away along the street. I swore slightly more loudly, then took off the shoe and beat it repeatedly on the side of the road. At that moment, the rain began to get much heavier. I jammed the shoe back on and ran to the shelter of an adjacent steel awning, which promptly collapsed under the weight of the rain, giving me a thorough drenching. I hurried under a more substantial shelter and stood, shivering.

“Feeling down, bud?” It was a soft voice, coming from out of the darkness behind me.

“Not me, I’m high as a kite,” I said.

“Oh yeah? Looks to me like someone took the wind out of your sails. But you know, I just might be able to help.” A figure stepped out of the shadows. A small man in a large, grey cloak, he fidgeted and twitched with the nervous energy of a flea.

“You can help me all right. Just tell me what sort of place is this that a man can’t get into a club without ID?”

“ID you say? Well it’s lucky you’ve found me, because it just so happens that IDs are my specialty.” He extracted a small cardboard rectangle from a pocket within his cloak and held it up in front of me.

“Guaranteed to get you into any club anywhere.”

I took a look. It seemed to be legit. I nodded.

“I’m so glad I could help you,” said the man. “That will be six thousand diablos.”

“You haven’t helped me much,” I said, doing a quick calculation in my head. “I’ve only got four thousand diablos left.”

“Okay,” he said. “How about we compromise. Let’s make it four thousand diablos.”

“Come on. A man in a club needs cash. I’ll give you two thousand.”

“Three thousand, five hundred.”

“Two thousand, five hundred.”

The little man thought for a moment, then grinned. “You got yourself a deal.”

I took out thirteen notes and handed them to him. He took the notes and handed me the ID.

“I’ll just get you your change,” he said. But as he reached into his cloak, he let out a sudden gasp and fell forwards onto me. I reached out to grab him, allowing him to wrap his arms around my waist to steady himself. He caught his breath and thanked me, then promptly disappeared back into the shadows. It was only a couple of seconds later that I thought to check my pockets. As expected, I had fallen for the oldest trick in the book. The envelope with the remaining diablos was gone.

I placed the ID in my pocket and walked back into the rain, a crazed grin on my face. I was in Hell, flat broke, soaked to the bone, and with no idea what I was supposed to be doing here. But what did that matter? I had ID.

Music throbbed out through the walls of the first nightclub I found, making the whole street vibrate. I strode confidently to the door where, right on cue, another oversized gorilla in an undersized suit jumped into my path and demanded ID. I smiled at the great ape, calmly took the ID from my pocket, and handed it to him. He stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then he turned back to me.

“Is this meant to be some sort of joke?”

“Not at all,” I said. “Now will you please let me through? I have ID.”

“This is not ID,” the bouncer growled, and he held up the card for me to see. Whatever had once been written was now smudged beyond recognition by the rain.

At that moment, something inside me snapped. I lunged at the bouncer, attempting to grab him by the throat. He just laughed, picking me up as if I were a sack of feathers and swinging me roughly from side to side. I tried to fight him off, pummeling him with my fists for all I was worth, but I made as much impact as a single raindrop on a bone-dry desert.

An excited crowd gathered outside the nightclub to watch the show. Like a mob of jackals, they could sense that someone was about to get hurt. And we all knew it wasn’t going to be the bouncer.